PJ! How nice to see you here! I hope all goes well for you.
Thanks! It's nice to be seen! I'm experiencing my semi-annual or annual urge to get myself, my house, and my finances in order, so rather than just peeking at the blog and forums every couple of months without signing in, I thought I'd better get some stuff done. And accountability always helps!
However, crispy potato pancakes with some blistered cherry tomatoes and a poached duck egg for breakfast made it all worth it :)
swick, that does sound good! For me, breakfast was a piece of chocolate cake. :-)
I used the chocolate cake mix I brought home from mom's, a little more than a cup of fairly liquid pumpkin puree from the freezer, one egg, a "glug" of oil (technical term!). The original instructions call for water, 2/3 cup of oil, and 3 eggs. My way is much healthier, albeit still resulting in chocolate cake! I understand you can use
any cake mix with just 1 can of pumpkin puree, to make mini muffins that are only 1 WW point. I got the idea for this from my sister, who used to do WW.
Oh, and I added a handful of really lovely dried cranberries. So good! Rich and moist, with little jewels of cranberry periodically. I don't much like orange veggies, so this is one way I can get myself to happily eat pumpkin!
Also, last night I identified something else to use - a single serve packet of strawberry lemonade (part of a gift basket who knows how long ago!) Having no nutritional value, I could have just thrown this out. I don't drink a lot of juice type drinks, and don't love strawberries or lemonade. But I decided to try to think of a way to use it ... and I did. I've been buying plain yoghurt to add to my dog's food, but am not acclimatized to the taste yet myself. So I added some of the drink powder to a bowl of yoghurt, let it sit for a bit, and it was lovely. Mild taste and more lightly sweetened than buying it already flavoured. Makes me wonder just how much sugar there is, in my usual vanilla yoghurt?!?!
Next on the "use up" hit list - a little jar of some kind of spread that I brought back from a trip a while ago - need to determine if it's still good, and if so, how to use it!
Helpful tip: I'm finding I'm more likely to use the things I need to use up if I take them 1 at a time out of their normal spot in the cupboards, and place them all by themselves in a highly visible place. As in:
"Oh yeah! I need to open that package of quinoa and see if it's still good!"